A New Ad Model for Digital Media

...every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.

Peter Thiel in Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Ads were lucrative for the old media companies because they controlled the distribution of their media forms. They could charge high prices because nobody could provide a close substitute.

Digital media companies live in the opposite scenario; the number of close substitutes is high and continually rising. For ads to become viable on digital, they need to be restructured to protect publishers from competitive encroachment. In the following infographic I present a new ad model that does this.